Proteins are components of every cell. How they have changed in the course of evolution for the purpose of taking on new functions in the body, has long been a subject of research.
The ancestors of modern mammals managed to evolve into one of the most successful animal lineages – the key was to start out small and simple, a new study reveals.
How and where life began 3.5 billion years ago is still a mystery, but there are two things of which scientists are almost certain. First, for much of that time, life on Earth was almost exclusively microbial. Second, there must have been prebiotic precursor compounds such as amino acids, organic acids, and lipids available to jumpstart the formation of DNA, enzymes, and cell walls, and to set life on a path leading to the complex forms we see today.
Decades' worth of research has shown that the motivation to feed, i.e., hunger and feelings of fullness, is controlled by hormones and small proteins called neuropeptides.
A team of researchers compared the genomes of woolly mammoths with modern day elephants to find out what made woolly mammoths unique, both as individuals and as a species. The investigators report April 7 in the journal Current Biology that many of the woolly mammoth’s trademark features—including their woolly coats and large fat deposits—were already genetically encoded in the earliest woolly mammoths, but these and other traits became more defined over the species’ 700,000+ year existence.
A pair of West Virginia University researchers, Amy Welsh and Chris Rota with the WVU Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design, are studying the habits and habitats of two West Virginia lagomorphs: the Appalachian cottontail and the snowshoe hare.
Whether in hot springs, in the human intestine or in the deep sea – microorganisms colonise almost every place on earth, sometimes under extreme conditions.
The Indo-West Pacific is the largest, most biodiverse marine ecosystem on Earth, and many of the species it supports have comparably wide ranges. Writing in “The Origin of Species,” Charles Darwin noted that “… many fish range from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean, and many shells are common to the eastern islands of the Pacific and the eastern shores of Africa, on almost exactly opposite meridians of latitude.”
Bruce Lieberman, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and senior curator of invertebrate paleontology at the KU Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum, sought to use steam-engine history to test the merits of “competitive exclusion,” a long-held idea in paleontology that species can drive other species to extinction through competition.
A new study led by researchers at the University of Utah explores a record of birds’ diets preserved in their feathers and radio tracking of their movements to find that birds eat far fewer invertebrates in coffee plantations than in forests, suggesting that the disturbance of their ecosystem significantly impacts the birds’ dietary options.
A new study published in Science Advances has not only revealed that an ALHS in Colias butterflies has an ancient origin, but also determined the mechanisms contributing to its persistence over millions of generations.
Urine scent marks are the original social media, allowing animals to advertise their location, status and identity. Now Cornell research is shining a new light – via thermal imaging of mice – on how this behavior changes depending on shifting social conditions.
A new study investigates how an extinct, carnivorous marsupial relative with canines so large they extended across the top of its skull could hunt effectively despite having wide-set eyes, like a cow or a horse.
Trilobites, prehistoric sea creatures, had so-called median eyes, single eyes on their foreheads, in addition to their compound eyes, research conducted by Dr Brigitte Schoenemann at the University of Cologne’s Institute of Zoology and Professor Dr Euan Clarkson at the University of Edinburgh has now found out.
An international scientific team led by Stony Brook University paleontologist Andrew J. Moore, PhD, has revealed that a Late Jurassic Chinese sauropod known as Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum sported a 15-meter-long neck. The details will be published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology and provide fresh insights on the evolution of the iconic sauropod body.
Black widow spiders have earned a fearsome reputation for their venomous bite. But in parts of the southern United States these spiders have much to fear themselves—from spider relatives who really don't like their company.
A new fossil discovery dating from ‘just’ a few million years after the greatest mass extinction provides the earliest evidence of the insect group that includes mosquitoes and flies
It had been thought to date that the species Homo sapiens has disproportionately large temporal lobes compared to other anthropoid primates, the group including anthropomorphic monkeys and apes. A new study, one of whose authors is Emiliano Bruner, a paleoneurologist at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), contradicts that hypothesis.
Climate, tectonics and time combine to create powerful forces that craft the face of our planet. Add the gradual sculpting of the Earth’s surface by rivers and what to us seems solid as rock is constantly changing.
Cartilaginous fish have changed much more in the course of their evolutionary history than previously believed. Evidence for this thesis has been provided by new fossils of a ray-like shark, Protospinax annectans, which demonstrate that sharks were already highly evolved in the Late Jurassic. This is the result of a recent study by an international research group led by palaeobiologist Patrick L. Jambura from the Department of Palaeontology at the University of Vienna, which was recently published in the journal Diversity.
Dinosaur claws had many functions, but now a team from the University of Bristol and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing has shown some predatory dinosaurs used their claws for digging or even for display.
Scientists who study the origins and evolution of the plague have examined hundreds of ancient human teeth from Denmark, seeking to address longstanding questions about its arrival, persistence and spread within Scandinavia.
If the emergence of mechanically propelled weapons in prehistory is commonly perceived as one of the hallmarks of the advance of modern human populations into the European continent, the existence of archery has always been more difficult to trace.
Geckos can use their tongue to differentiate their own odor from that of other members of their species, as researchers from the University of Bern have shown in a new experimental study.
World first research from CSIRO and the University of South Australia shows that the feathers of seabirds such as the Wandering Albatross can provide clues about their long-distance foraging, which could help protect these species from further decline.
It is called Radiocarbon 3.0: it is the newest method developments in radiocarbon dating, and promises to reveal valuable new insights about key events in the earliest human history, starting with the interaction between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals in Europe.
Decisions are difficult. Humans often find themselves deliberating between multiple conflicting alternatives, or frustratingly fixated upon a single option.
Scientists warn that if action isn’t taken soon, the Eurasian lynx will vanish from France. This elusive wild cat, which was reintroduced to Switzerland in the 1970s, moved across the French border by the end of the decade.
Along the shores of Africa’s Lake Victoria in Kenya roughly 2.9 million years ago, early human ancestors used some of the oldest stone tools ever found to butcher hippos and pound plant material, according to new research led by scientists with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Queens College, CUNY, as well as the National Museums of Kenya, Liverpool John Moores University and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
Changes in river systems, overfishing and the appearance of new, invasive species can lead to a drastic decline in the number of native fish inhabiting aquatic ecosystems.
While testing how well commercial bumblebees pollinate early spring crops, Cornell University researchers made a surprising discovery: dead wild bumblebee queens in the hives, an average of 10 per nest box.
Computer scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in collaboration with biologists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, recently announced in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution a new, predictive model that is capable of accurately forecasting where a migratory bird will go next—one of the most difficult tasks in biology. The model is called BirdFlow, and while it is still being perfected, it should be available to scientists within the year and will eventually make its way to the general public.
Evolution has occurred more rapidly than previously thought in the Chesapeake Bay wetlands, which may decrease the chance that coastal marshes can withstand future sea level rise, researchers at the University of Notre Dame and collaborators demonstrated in a recent publication in Science.
In recent years, there have been increasing reports of toxic blue-green algae blooms in summer, even in German lakes, caused by climate warming and increased nutrient inputs.
Imagine overhearing the Powerball lottery winning numbers, but you didn't know when those numbers would be called—just that at some point in the next 10 years or so, they would be. Despite the financial cost of playing those numbers daily for that period, the payoff is big enough to make it worthwhile.
If you take a magnifying glass and a torch and look at your teeth very carefully in the mirror, in places you can spot a pattern of fine, parallel lines running across your teeth. These correspond to the striae of Retzius that mark the growth of our tooth enamel.
A study by researchers from the University of Adelaide and other institutions has found that in a population of island tiger snakes the bones in their jaws increase in length after feeding on large prey, while their mainland counterparts show no change.
While humans have been evolving for millions of years, the past 12,000 years have been among the most dynamic and impactful for the way we live today, according to an anthropologist who organized a special journal feature on the topic. Our modern world all started with the advent of agriculture, said Clark Spencer Larsen, professor of anthropology.